The tachyon sensors on the Newton-2 were capable of sweeping the entire Runner fleet, from their smallest skiffs to their heaviest transport craft. It didn't take long for the first immediate pattern to jump out - but it took almost an hour to really figure out what it meant.
"A lot of these ships have been modified recently," Sandra said, tapping her thumbs on her console as she looked at the feed of ship-scans that she had been assigned. Other members from the Newton-2's staff were examining their own roster of ships, including the engineering compliment. Lewis, who had been moving from screen to screen as the scans came in, paused behind her.
"Yeah," he said. "And I think I know for what. At first, I was thinking, it had to be for transporting stuff, right? But the containers are kinda small, and they're redundant, and too much power draw. They're obviously antimatter storage, like big tanker types."
Antimatter storage was difficult to detect on tachyon sensors, because the most common way to store antimatter was as a supercooled slush in a paragravity field. The particles didn't interact with much in that state, so there were very few tachyon vectors to pick up on.
"There's not enough antimatter though?" Sandra asked. "Like, uh, we've been running their masses and accelerations and doing some probabilities-"
"They're not
full. They're half-empty, or less than half. Looking at some of these, they don't have anything in them at all."
"So what, they're going broke?" Sandra asked, and Lewis shook his head.
"No, the opposite. Some of these storage tanks look new. They're building up a surplus and they're projecting the need for new storage. Slowly though. Over years. If it was all at once, they'd have more be totally empty."
"... so a change of fortune, then?" Sandra hazarded.
"It'd fit with what they said about the Scorpion, I think? Nobody's going to fuck with them with a bunch of atomics in the middle of the fleet, so they're not getting shaken down anymore. Look, none of the newer ships have any kind of weapon damage, it's only the old ones, and it's a stark change too." Lewis leaned over, his tail twitching from side to side as he tapped away at the console, bringing up a few ships he had tagged. "See? Here's some weapon damage that they haven't fully repaired from, uh, seventeen years ago, I think, on one of their mostly automated ships."
The ship in question looked like it was a spindly probe-carrier, the kind that could be flown by laser-coms from another ship, so there was no reason to hurry to fix the jagged slice that ran along one of the cargo holds on her port flank.
"There are, like, seven other ships like this, which were damaged between twenty to fourteen years ago - then all weapon damage stops."
"What about recent repairs?" Sandra asked. "Like, these are all the ships they can afford to skimp on-"
"Ahh, but you forget," Lewis said, his red ears perking up, and his muzzle showing a great deal of very sharp teeth as he gave his best foxy grin. "I'm a
genius. I ran skimscans along the most likely ships to be damaged, looking for any major weaponry damage indications on the layers below the outer cladding, stuff that's really hard to hide. Superstructure stressors, that kind of thing!" he clacked away at the keyboard. 'And…"
"The damage all stops here," Sandra said, pointing at the timeline of images he'd brought up. "Fourteen years ago - one year after the Scorpion arrived."
"Ding ding ding!" Lewis said, standing up.
"So…" Sandra stood up. "Let me think like Lera here a bit." She closed her eyes, putting her fingers to her temples. "Runner fleets are attacked...but not hard enough to kill ships - damage here, damage there…" She paused, then snapped her fingers. "Pirates!"
"That is regrettably consistent with Runner activities in the former Aquillian Empire," Tai'lon said from his console. "Though, the term 'pirates' is less accurate than 'privateers'… Runner fleets are too mobile for the former Imperial Navy to successfully engage them unless the Runners were foolish enough to stray near bases. So, rather, the Empire would pay less scrupulous spacers with swifter ships to hound them. To…" He made a face. "Keep them moving."
"Oh. Just like the ones we had to fight." Jae-Haw said. "Haha, wow, we were so good at piracy we accidentally a whole empire."
"Charming," Sandra said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Might be the same here, might just be people threatening them, right? But why pick a fight with so many ships?"
"Sure, a lot of ships, but a lot in bad shape, and a lot of civilians." Jae-Haw pointed out. "If you have a half-a-dozen decent pirate vessels and you're racketeering, all you have to do is tangle a few times, prove you can slip through their defenses if you need to, then name your price. Sure, you can't
win against all these ships, but privateers with backing can afford the losses."
"It was our experience that our privateers would often hound the same fleet for decades, sometimes. Small engagements here and there, as reminders of their strength or warnings if they strayed off the path, and regular collections between them." Mr. Sythe concluded. "It would weaken the runners over time, which suited the Empire well."
"So, pirates hound them for years, Scorpion shows up, then the pirates go 'oh shit, we better not bother them' and the attacks stop?"
"... then where did the missiles go?" Lewis asked.
Sandra frowned. "Yeah, that was the shitty part of the hypothetical."
"I'm still worried we can't get through to our people." Chrissy said. "How are we coming on breaking their encryption?"
"I think I have it." Nhi said, holding a hand up to her headphones. "Give me a few seconds, I'm listening through."
Everyone went back to their tasks. At the weapon's station, Jae-Haw and Mr. Scythe were looking over scans of the siloship's weapon compliment, trying to get details.
"What was that?" Jae-Haw asked, rewinding the tape. In slow motion, they watched a ripple of light flicker across the display, and Mr. Sythe adjusted one of the render settings.
"Routine recharging of the computer system. Gave a good idea of the interior. The missile outlines seem to match the ones on the records."
"Yeah, I'm not seeing anything different. Certainly nothing that would make it useful against ships. Only planets."
"Or stations." Mr. Scythe pointed out.
"Got it!" Nhi shouted, turning around in her chair. "This is bad, uh, can I put it on the screen-"
"Go ahead." Chrissy said, and there was some fumbling before the split image, still, appeared on the screen. One showed Admiral Laiconva, the other clearly an officer aboard the Scorpion, still in their Solar Patrol uniform with a Lieutenant Commander's pins on her collar. Dr. Gadhavi was visible in the back of the shot, looking worried.
"This is from about five minutes after she docked back with the Scorpion." Nhi explained, "You'll remember she came from Homeship, so that's… not great. Here."
The video started playing, catching the Scorpion commander in mid-sentence.
"- that's what I'm saying, there's an Aquillian aboard the ship. Some kind of observer or something. She saw it with her own eyes."
"A prisoner, perhaps-"
"Not a prisoner! Wearing the same uniform! We saw this during the war, they're
auxiliaries! Colonial troops, with an Aquillian observer onboard. Some of the worst fighting in the war was against their auxiliaries, before I went into cryo. Anyone who gives them a fight, they repurpose. Let them keep their culture, sort of frozen in place, but use them as weapons. Of course they'd use us as explorers!"
"I think you might be jumping to conclusions."
"I think you might be too quick to trust them. They are
not like us." the woman snapped. "Do you really believe what they said about a
math error?"
Chrissy's brow furrowed a bit as she watched that - but she didn't speak up. Sandra bit her lip to keep herself from immediately bothering her about what she had seen. Even if she wanted to know. Right now.
"They're technically advanced, but for an exploration ship its…" Dr. Gadhavi shook her head. "It's all wrong. Everything about it feels wrong. Their fashion, their attitude and discipline, their... drug culture, it's radically different from the Alliance I left behind. I can't believe this would happen in, what, two decades?"
"They're drugged into compliance." the commander added. "We've seen that before. Like, we had sedatives and such in Solar Patrol, but
nothing like what Dr. Gadhavi saw in the medbay. And the way some of them are dressed… It's like a mockery of Solar Patrol uniforms. A
costume."
"We have several of them on Homeship, with guards within easy acquisition distance," the Admiral said. "But I don't want to start an incident on a
suspicion and a single Aquillian. Can we find some definite proof, one way or the other?"
"We may not have time to wait for more proof," the commander said, frowning. "If they're auxiliaries, they might shoot a message missile back to the Imperial fleet. Even if it's just more auxiliaries like them, it'll be an incredible risk for the fleet."
"If we run now, we'll ruin our antimatter operations," the Admiral said. "We've only
just started to hit our levels before the damn Piranhas started extorting us." He shook his head. "I need more options here."
The door behind the Admiral opened and in strode Slade and the Admiral's daughter. "Father," she said, quickly. "Jack had an idea."
"Thank God, Jack, what is it?" Admiral Laiconva sighed.
"We need to get an agent onto their ship, and access their computers directly," Captain Slade said, voice grim. "There is
no way that the Aquillians let their computer architecture stay similar to the Solar Patrol I know. There'd be too many possible backdoors, secret communication channels… it's a revolutionaries dream."
"It'd be an IT nightmare on top of that!" somebody in the back of the bridge added.
"Can we hack them remotely? You said they broadcasted some old codes, right?"
"Probably not." Slade concluded heavily. "Look, the nature of this is, we don't have a lot to go on, but if we're right, we can't afford a mistake. It's existential."
"Why else would they have an Aquillian aboard? We were estimating their Empire was, what, eight or nine thousand light-years across? If it was a quarter-century later, we'd probably still be fighting them. Empires like that collapse in centuries, not years." the commander added.
"We have to make sure," the Admiral said. "We have to check their computers."
"Then I volunteer to go," Captain Slade said.
"Jack, no!" The Admiral's daughter said, grabbing his arm, her body pressing against his, her faceplate flashing with concern.
"Look, hold their crew. Come up with a reason. If they have them, they can just rabbit and send word home. We maybe let them stew a while, see what they do. If they try anything, we outnumber them, and they're barely armed. If they don't... I'll go over to
negotiate. They'll trust me, I'm in charge. Anyone else, they'll think it's a trick." he explained. "And then I'll talk my way out." He gave a grim little smile.
"What if they don't let you?" she asked, quietly.
"... well, then, old belt pirate trick." he said, "You know how to accept a ship's surrender? You telemat somebody over with a bomb on a dead man's switch. Won't need much." he said, "An antimatter microtrap. It'll fit in my pocket, I just need to stand near an outer bulkhead. Let's let them stew for an hour, then I'll contact them."
"We're not doing this. Absolutely not, not in this fleet. Jack, please-"
The recording was interrupted by a chime from Nhi's station.
"A transmission, from the Scorpion." Nhi said, voice small.
"... hold it for one second," Chrissy said, holding up her hand. She sounded nervous. "So, um, when they said 'math error'? And the Admiral looked away for a bit? It...was just a recording, but I got an intense… feeling from him." She frowned. "He's guilty."
"They're lying about the math error?" Sandra asked, her eyes widening.
"I don't think they are," Chrissy said. "I think they just...didn't
check very hard."
"Would you?" Tai'lon asked.
"Should I, uh, put them on now?" Nhi asked.
Chrissy nodded. "Y-Yeah. Onscreen," she said, nervously.
---
How does the crew act in light of this information?
[ ] Act as if they hadn't heard anything.
[ ] Act honestly and openly - you overheard them, let them know it.
[ ] Write In
Slade is going to propose a negotiation aboard the Newton. He has a small antimatter bomb, just big enough to do serious internal damage, but small enough that it'll be difficult to detect without looking like you're looking for it. How do you respond to the proposal?
[ ] Write In
